North Dallas High murals pay homage to animated alumnus Tex Avery

Tex Avery's cartoons were funny 70 years ago, and they're still
funny today. VERNON BRYANT/DMN Teacher Julie Yun's art students at
North Dallas High are painting murals of characters created and
developed by Tex Avery, Class of 1926. View larger Photography
Photo store

Avery created the wise-cracking Bugs Bunny and awarded him the
signature, "Eh, what's up, doc?"

He first heard the line at North Dallas High, where he graduated
with the Class of 1926. Standing in the cavernous hallways, one can
almost hear Roaring '20s teenagers passing one another during class
changes. "Hiya, doc." "What's new, doc?" "What's up, doc?"

Avery, who died of lung cancer in 1980, once told an interviewer
that Daffy Duck was born on White Rock Lake in East Dallas, where
he and his friends hunted ducks.

Who knew?

Avery's animated films - that's what academics call cartoons -
are enjoying a renaissance at his alma mater this month. In a
narrow, whitewashed hallway between the cafeteria and a computer
lab, students are painting color-drenched murals depicting the
Avery characters - Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, sad-eyed Droopy the dog, and
the rest.

"I grew up watching them on Cartoon Network," said Jesus
Martinez, one of the student muralists.

"I like the ones with Foghorn Leghorn and Droopy," said Noland
Sowels, a 17-year-old senior.

Even though Avery created his best cartoons in the 1930s and
'40s, they still appeal to young people today. The reason,
probably, is because the stories are fast-paced and infused with
satire, irony, sex and violence. Above all, they're funny.

These cartoons started out among the "short subjects" preceding
a feature film. In the late '40s, some were resurrected for
television. Today, they live in DVD collections and on cable
channels.

Walt Disney was the cartoon king of Avery's era. Think of Mickey
Mouse and Goofy or Jiminy Cricket and Snow White. Disney characters
were sweet, earnest and without rough edges. Avery and his crew
decided to go the other way, creating edgy characters such as Red
Hot Riding Hood and the wolf who lusted after her.

"I think he brought Texas attitude to his work," said Robert
Musburger, professor emeritus at the University of Houston and a
noted animation historian. "His characters had a certain cockiness
- get out of my way because I'm always right. Bugs was the epitome
of that character."

And it all started in Dallas.

Grads are 'great people'

The student artists are competing in a contest to paint the best
mural of Avery's characters. Winners will be declared later this
month. Teachers say incidents of illegal graffiti have decreased
recently, because students can use the cartoon contest as an
outlet. But the North Dallas teachers who created the mural contest
set a bigger goal.

"We want our students to know that great people went to school
here, and that there are great people here today," said Gordon
Markley, a business teacher who came up with the idea of using
Avery to make that point.

Avery left Dallas after high school and briefly attended an art
school in Chicago. But he chafed under the discipline of structured
classes. He returned to Dallas and worked odd jobs for several
months before moving to Los Angeles. Tex Avery rendered this
artwork for the North Dallas High School yearbook when he was a
student there in the '20s. " width="175" onclick="return
clickedImage(this);" onmouseover=" this.style.cursor='hand'"
src="/sharedcontent/dws/img/v3/02-22-2010.nmc_22AveryYearbook.GH12P8901.1.jpg">
North Dallas High School Tex Avery rendered this artwork for the
North Dallas High School yearbook when he was a student there in
the '20s.

Avery had penned some cartoons in high school for the yearbook
and school newspaper, but they weren't very good. His attempts to
sell a cartoon strip to California newspapers went nowhere.

After a while, he landed a job with Walter Lantz studios, which
years later produced the Woody Woodpecker cartoons. But he and
Lantz fell out over money, and Avery moved on to Warner Bros.
studios, where he worked from 1935 to 1941. As a director, he was
responsible for bringing together the whole cartoon - the story,
the music, the writing and the animation.

Chuck Jones, a fellow director who created the Road Runner/Wile
E. Coyote series, called Avery "a genius" and credited him with
moving cartoons from realism to surrealism, meaning that Bugs could
do things like moving a hole in the ground from one place to
another so Elmer Fudd could fall into it.

Anything could happen in a Tex Avery cartoon.

"Tex took things to another level," said Jerry Beck, an
animation historian in Los Angeles (cartoonbrew.com). "He is right
up there with the greats of comedy like Buster Keaton and Charlie
Chaplin. And as a director, he is way up there, too."

Avery was as introspective as he was zany. Later in life, he
lamented spending too much time at work and neglecting his wife and
two children, one of whom died of a drug overdose in 1972. He later
divorced and lived alone in a small apartment. He died in Los
Angeles at age 72.

Enduring images

Avery created enduring images that cause people to exclaim, "Oh
yeah, I remember that!"

Late in his career, he directed television commercials. One of
the most successful was for Raid, the insecticide. A cartoon
cockroach's eyes get wide, he screams "RAID!" and lands dead on his
back.

Animation historians credit Avery with inventing the extreme
"take" and "double take" that became commonplace in cartoons.

The best example is Wolfie, the amorous rogue who appears in a
series of cartoons that lay waste to the Little Red Riding Hood
children's story.

When the wolf first spots the sexy Red Hot Riding Hood, his eyes
bug out of his head, and his body becomes horizontally erect in a
metaphor that adults understand. It's called a "take."

"Tex loved the wild takes," Beck said. "Every part of a
character's body would fly apart and come back together."

The Mask, a 1994 Jim Carrey movie that incorporated animation
and live action, paid homage to several "Averyisms." In one scene,
the cartoon version of Carrey's character spots Cameron Diaz in a
nightclub. His eyes pop out, his jaw literally drops to the floor,
and his tongue unrolls like a garden hose.

The 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? features a cartoon
character named Jessica Rabbit, a sexpot with more curves than a
mountain road. Red Hot Riding Hood was the inspiration for Jessica,
according to animation historians.

In some cases, Avery acknowledged that he had gone too far in
creating scabrous characters with sketchy morals and values.

Take the misanthropic Screwy Squirrel, who starred in five
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoons that Avery directed between 1944 and
1946.

The first Screwy Squirrel cartoon opens with cute, cuddly Sammy
Squirrel merrily dancing through a pastoral forest setting. Sammy
is childlike, with a sweet voice - clearly a parody of a Disney
character.

Before long, Sammy runs into rough-and-tumble Screwy.

"What kind of a cartoon is this going to be, anyway?" Screwy
asks Sammy.

"The story is all about me and my cute little furry friends in
the forest," Sammy answers.

A disgusted Screwy takes Sammy behind a tree, beats him
senseless and then takes over the cartoon. For the next seven
minutes, Screwy inflicts torture on a not-too-bright dog named
Meathead.

"Tex Avery had no patience for the earnest world of the
saccharine sweet," said Kirsten Thompson, an animation historian at
Wayne State University in Detroit.

To post a comment, log into your chosen social network and then add your comment below. Your comments are subject to our Terms of Service and the privacy policy and terms of service of your social network. If you do not want to comment with a social network, please consider writing a letter to the editor.